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Asian Test championship in offing

The Asian Cricket Council readies to steal a march over its big brother the International Cricket Council, by staging an Asian Test Championship in the immediate future.

It will be recalled that the ICC in its June meeting, after first waxing hot about the idea of holding a world championship of Test cricket, cooled off in the space of a week with chief executive David Richards indicating that procedural glitches would preclude an early implementation of the idea.

The Asian body seems to feel no such qualms. Thus, no sooner had Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Khalid Mahmood proposed a Test championship for Asian nations, in line with the Asia Cup ODI tournament, than a three-man committee was formed to put together an action plan for the speedy implementation of the idea.

Asif Iqbal of the CBFS, Ehsan Mani of the PCB and Raj Singh Dungarpur of the BCCI will, thus, submit a detailed blueprint within two months.

The proposal calls for the championship to be held under ACC aegis, without involving the global body. A neutral venue, either Sharjah or Dhaka, could be considered, sources say.

Interestingly, Bangladesh's own claim for full Test status has beet off to the June 1999 ICC annual general body meeting for a final decision.

In the interim, a three man panel comprising Bobby Simpson, Nasim ul Ghani and Andy Pycroft will help draw up Bangaldesh's cricket schedule for the coming season, with special focus on having the team play unofficial Tests in order to guage its progress. The conditions of wickets and umpiring standards in that country will also be studied by the panel, before a final decision is taken a year from now.